updated 04:30 pm EST, Thu December 27, 2007

Google Wins Vs Gu Ge

Google has won a lawsuit in China that could have significantly affected its success in the country, Pacific Epochreports. The American search engine firm had been sued by Beijing firm Gu Ge Technology for using the words "Gu Ge" to represent itself in China; by registering its name first in late April 2006, GGT had the exclusive rights to use the name for its online retail store, the complaint reads. The presiding judge has stricken own this argument and ruled in favor of Google, noting that actual use of the Gu Ge name by Google started a week earlier -- indicating that Google could not have knowingly infringed on another company's patent, according to the court.

The ruling allows Google to keep its Chinese name, which was chosen to resemble the phonetic sound of the search engine brand while maintaining the language (translating to "valley song" in Mandarin). Google is a relative latecomer to searches in the southeast Asian territory, which are dominated by local firm Baidu and also involve earlier American efforts such as Yahoo China. GGT is not known to have made an appeal, while neither it nor Google have commented on the results.